The Daily Phoenix

Senator Morton's Plan of Electing the President and Vice-President of the United States.

Senator Morton arrived in Washington Wednesday, for the purpose of availing himself of the facilities of the Congressional Library and certain unprinted records of Congress in preparing his report for the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections, of which he is chairman, upon the proposed election of the President and Vice-President of the United States by direct vote of the people, instead of by the intervention of electoral colleges.

Mr. Morton's plan of reform, which is that of dividing the States into Presidential districts of equal population and contiguous territories, and giving each district a single vote for President and Vice-President, would, in his opinion, if adopted before the summer of 1876, strike such a blow at the caucus tyranny of party conventions that Caesarism, if there should be any danger of it under the existing electoral plan, would be impossible, or, what is the same thing, possible only in the event of the masses being as enamored of the idea of perpetual office-holding as the army of office-holders now in possession.

Senator Morton, in his report, intends to go back to the debates in the Constitutional Convention over the mode of electing the President and Vice-President, and show how the best and most logical minds there present, at the head of whom was the illustrious Franklin, pointed out the inconveniences and dangers of the method that prevailed, and argued eloquently for entrusting the people directly with the determination of the one question that really concerned them more than any other in the federal system.

He will show, too, the mistaken reasons on which the conservatives in the convention carried the point and fashioned their Presidential election upon the aristocratic models of the Venetian and Genoese republics, while fearing that they had already conferred too much direct political power upon the general mass of the people.

He will refer to the cases of Jefferson and Burr and Adams and Jackson to illustrate his assertion that the Electoral College system, besides being useless as a medium of selecting men of better character and attainments than could be discerned by enthusiastic and unthinking direct voters, can become, through intrigue, so dangerous as to precipitate civil war, and that such danger grows with the lapse of time, and is, by the nature of the system, more dangerous now than ever, and will be so hereafter.

The district system is supported by the Senator in preference to the plan preferred by others of giving every voter in every State a direct and independent vote for President and Vice-President, because it gives more practical force to the wishes of contiguous communities and interests, and restrains the power of such log-rolling combinations as carry prohibitory tariffs and fraudulent internal improvement bills.

This was the plan recommended by an illustrious Senate committee that sat upon the question nearly fifty years ago, and brought in a report that contrasted the merits of both plans of voting; and though the logical argument is admitted to lie apparently on the side of individual voting, the practical view of the question demonstrates that the result of a vote by districts organized as proposed would be much nearer a pure, impartial expression of the popular will.

Senator Morton expects to carry his committee, unanimously, for his plan, and hopes to advance the measure considerably before Congress as early as next session.